Sunday, 25 August 2013

Water On A Chip Fat Fire

Four years ago, a woman in her mid-thirties took
to CNN to savage Israel’s offensive against Gaza in an impeccable English accent. “The Israeli barbaric
assault on innocent civilians” was “horrific”, was her passionate plea; the
numbers of dead “continuously increase”. Occasionally she seemed almost
overwhelmed with emotion as she spoke of mothers unable to even give their
children a glass of milk.

What rationalisations, what self-justifications
must now be going through the mind of the Syrian dictator’s
British-born-and-raised wife Asma al-Assad – notoriously described as a “rose
in the desert” by Vogue magazine months before Syria’s uprising began?
Perhaps she has other concerns: recent photos uploaded by the regime’s
Instagram account reveal her wearing a Jawbone UP, an upmarket activity tracker
that monitors meals, sleep and exercise.

It is nearly two and a half years since her
husband’s regime plunged Syria into an unspeakably brutal civil war by firing
on what began as a secular movement for democracy: if Israel’s cruelty was
“barbaric” and “horrific”, what words are left to describe her husband’s
crimes? More than 100,000 dead, millions displaced, and now evidence pointing
towards the firing of chemical weapon-laden missiles that suffocated families
in their beds.

We don’t know the emotional response of this
glorified gangster’s wife at children fitting and foaming at the mouth. Neither are we
sure who fired the chemical weapons at eastern Damascus. Initial doubt that
Assad’s thugs could be responsible were hardly the preserve of conspiracy
theorists.

Why would the regime unleash nerve gas just as UN
weapons inspectors were checking into their hotel a few kilometres away? Why
use them now as the dictatorship has gained the upper hand in the civil war?
Why attract the threat of Western attack just as interest in Syria had waned, and
the rebel forces had become so discredited? Have we not already established
that al-Qa’ida elements – increasingly prominent on the rebel side – are
capable of anything?

But experts with no ulterior motive simply do not
believe the rebels capable of unleashing such a targeted strike, even if they
had the desire and possession of some chemical agents. Syria’s dictatorship has
only just allowed the UN to inspect the site after dragging its feet. Attention
has been drawn to Assad’s brother Maher, a notoriously sadistic general who
once ordered troops to shoot unarmed protesters in the head and heart.

Whatever the truth behind this unforgivable
crime, the likelihood of some form of Western intervention is greater than
ever, as David Cameron, Barack Obama and France’s foreign minister Laurent
Fabius have made clear. The Cruise Missile Liberals, who casually call for
other people’s children to fight their wars and for bombs to fall on the heads
of those they will never meet, are beginning to cry for military action.

It is perplexing indeed: these are the sorts of
people who generally favour bombs to be dropped on the sorts of Islamist
fighters taking on Assad’s forces. But it is a perfectly human response to look
at toddlers in bodybags and want to do something. No dictatorship is a legitimate
form of government – it is a gang of thugs whose violence begins with depriving
the people of the right to choose who rules them.

But Western intervention would surely be
disastrous. When protesters first took to the streets of Damascus, they were
heavily secular and democracy-orientated. There are still such elements, such
as the Syrian Democratic People’s Party. But rebel forces have become increasingly taken over by Islamic fundamentalists,
bolstered by prestige in their courageous fighting and aid from wealthy Gulf
elites.

It is the region’s Western-backed fundamentalist
monarchies such as Saudi Arabia who have armed the rebels. Remember Abu Sakkar,
the rebel commander filmed cutting out and apparently eating the heart of a
government soldier while ranting against Syria’s Alawite minority? His forces,
the Farouq Brigades, are actually among some of the more moderate Islamist
groupings.

There are now two powerful al-Qa’ida groupings
operating. One is Jabhat al-Nusra, originally a spin-off from al-Qa’ida in
Iraq, a resurgent movement responsible for some of the worst atrocities in the
neighbouring country’s sectarian bloodbath. It took the first provincial
capital, the city of Raqqa, earlier this year, giving it huge sway in the
country’s north-east. It swiftly imposed strict Islamist laws, intimidating
women and smashing up shops selling alcohol.

Then there is ISIS, an even more zealous
al-Qa’ida formation that has fired on secular protesters and harassed the
civilian population of Aleppo. A “civil war within a civil war” beckons:
members of the Farouq Brigades have spoken of a second revolution against
al-Qa’ida if Assad falls, and Free Syrian Army Military Council member Kamal
Hamami was allegedly killed in July by such elements. No wonder many of the
secular Syrian activists who first took the streets now fear the revolution has
been hijacked, and even fear the fall of Assad.

There is a frightening precedent. In the 1980s,
Western arms to Afghan jihadis were funnelled by the Pakistani secret services
to the most radical groups. When the Soviet-backed Afghan regime fell in 1992,
the victorious rebel groups collapsed into internecine conflict, reducing Kabul
to rubble and leading many to welcome the Taliban as restorers of order.

Iraq’s government fear that a Syrian opposition
takeover would plunge Lebanon and Iraq into civil war. The conflict has already
contributed to Iraq’s descent back into chaos: more than 1,000 died in the country
in July, the highest toll since 2008. An attack could invite retaliation from
Iran and an escalation of Russian’s support for Assad’s thugs, helping to drag
the region even further into disaster.

And then there’s the legacy of Western
intervention in the region. The West props up numerous Middle Eastern
dictatorships, including the fundamentalist House of Saud. Bahrain’s
pro-democracy activists are battling a Western-backed dictatorship, and in 2011
suffered a tacitly Western-backed Saudi invasion. Western protests over the
Egyptian’s junta massacre of the Muslim Brotherhood were muted indeed, and the
US provides the military with $1.2bn of annual aid. US drone attacks provoke
widespread fury.

The Iraq war led to a sectarian bloodbath, Western crimes such
as the use of white phosphorous in flattened Fallujah and a shift in regional
power that favoured Iran. The US were driven out of Lebanon in the early 1980s
and Somalia in the early 1990s. Twelve years on, Afghanistan remains an
intractable, bloody mess. Libya is often cited as a rare success story but –
despite being infinitely less complicated than Syria – it led to horrendous
atrocities against black Libyans, and the country is now an anarchic state
ruled by militias on the brink of conflict.

It would be perverse indeed if the West ended up
the de facto allies of al-Qa’ida, though it would mark a return to a disastrous
dalliance with international Islamic fundamentalism. There’s no question that
those who use chemical weapons must be arraigned in an international court. But
a UN-brokered peace process involving all the local and regional players
remains the only solution.

It may not satisfy the understandable impulse
that “we have to do something”. After all, throwing water on a chip-fat fire is
“doing something”. Syria’s nightmare looks as if it could not get worse: the
truth is it could, with calamitous consequences for the whole Middle East.